All abroad!

'Don't panic, don't panic, don't panic, don't panic-'

The words reverberated through his skull like a broken record. Michael couldn't understand how his skin became water and why the fuck he couldn't feel it change. The fact that he saw his muscles didn't help the situation.

He looked at his left arm and immediately realized that it was a mistake. It was made entirely of water and still glowed with soft blue light. Michael bit his cheek to keep himself from screaming in shock and took a closer look.

His water arm looked... Well, like an arm, but transparent. It was as if someone made his skin, muscles and bones out of jelly and attached this monstrosity at the place of his arm while he looked the other way. The strangest thing was that his bone didn't look broken, in fact it looked as healthy as it ever would.

He wiggled his fingers and nearly had a heart attack when he noticed they were flexing in all directions. Michael could only return his fingers to their normal position and run out of the water as if his life depended on it. But just as he turned to escape the sea, his skin snapped back into place, setting Michael's nerves on fire.

"БЛЯТЬ!" ("WHORE!")

He fell face down into the sand and groaned at the sensation against his skin. The smallest grains of sand dug into his flesh like needles, but gradually the pain went away, leaving behind only the warmth of the sand. Michael didn't know what had happened, but he knew who to blame.

"That Octo-bitch..."

Right now, he had two prime candidates for destruction: the Fire Nation and the Spirits, because both were fucking bastards. It was easy for him to accept that his new problem came from some crap that octopus had done.

He took a deep breath and calmed his nerves. If he meets this Spirit again, he will tear off a pair of tentacles from him. In the meantime, Michael decided to check his body for wounds.

The first thing he noticed were his arms. His right arm, still full of scars, stopped hurting so much, and the marks themselves looked much calmer. There were no more bright red lines and bright starbursts, just light patches of skin that formed a strange pattern on his arm. The rest of his skin is much clearer and softer, as if he had just stepped out of a spa.

His left arm was no longer broken, which he would've considered a miracle earlier, but he knew better. What happened to him healed his arm, so he might only pull out one tentacle from that octopus.

The second thing he noticed was the complete absence of hair on his body. Luckily the hair on his head was intact, but everything else was as clean as a baby's bottom. To be honest, it's weirded him out. The only thing he could assume was that he instinctively turned the hair on his head into water, and all the rest just fell off his body.

"If I can do that again, I'll never have to shave. Hmm."

He scratched his clean chin and looked towards the sea. Michael didn't want to repeat of whatever it was anytime soon, but he needed to check something.

The black-haired teenager raised his hand towards the water and beckoned it over, and to his surprise, it followed! He just played with the water for a couple of minutes, forming various shapes out of it, but in the end he nodded in satisfaction. His Waterbending worked again.

It was obvious that his Airbending still refused to cooperate, but he could survive without wind for the moment. Michael looked around the beach and sighed heavily. Now he just needs to build a raft and sail towards the North.

"Thank Loki, I took the rope with me."

He looked at the setting sun and frowned. Looks like he'll have to start tomorrow. Michael fell into the hammock and pulled the covers over himself, knowing how cold nights can be on the coast. If he had dry wood, he would start a fire, but there was only damp jungle around, so today he will sleep in the cold.

Sighing heavily, Michael Cordato fell asleep, wondering how his friends were coping without him.

-=-=-=-=-=-

Katara, Sokka, and Aang were not in the best of moods. The battle with Zhao and Zuko during the Winter Solstice was quite the event, but their sadness came from a different source. Their mysterious friend disappeared from the face of the earth when they met Haru.

All they found were his footprints and scratched trees - as if someone were digging their nails into the bark of trees, trying to keep themselves in place. Everything looked too strange to understand what had happened.

At first, Katara speculated that he might have been arrested and sent to work with the Earthbenders, but this theory fell apart when Katara visited the prison herself. They helped the Earthbenders regain their freedom, but never found any trace of their friend.

It wasn't until Aang went to the Spirit World to save Sokka that he remembered their old conversation.

'I asked how one can kill a Spirit.'

Aang sat on Appa's neck, guiding the Bison towards the North, while the siblings from the South Water Tribe quietly went about their business. The young Avatar didn't know how to break the news to his friends, but ended up just turning to them with a completely serious face, which immediately caught their attention.

"Aang? Buddy, what made you frown like that?"

Sokka immediately put his sword and whetstone aside, fully prepared for anything.

"I think... No, I know what happened to Michael."

Katara and Sokka just stared blankly at their friend, not fully understanding what he was saying.

"When we were on Kyoshi Island, he asked me how one could kill a Spirit. That one of them scared him and that he wants revenge. Those nail marks that we found on the trees in the place where Michael was most likely the marks that the Spirit left. If Michael is still alive, then he is in the Spirit World now, but I don't know where exactly..."

Silence reigned in the air, and only Momo's soft sobs broke the silence. The poor guy was horrified when Michael disappeared, not understanding what happened to his hairless lemur buddy.

"Can you find it? Ask other Spirits if they saw him?" Katara immediately blurted out her idea.

After the disappearance of Michael, the girl didn't sleep for several days, until fatigue caught up with her and she collapsed from exhaustion. Sokka has since forced her to sleep, which he says was "Just wrong, she should be the one responsible."

"Does anyone have a map of the Spirit World? Maybe this will help us somehow?"

Sokka threw himself into training. Yes, some outsider might think that he was fine, but Aang and Katara knew that Sokka would not be able to sleep without muscle pain. He didn't blame himself for his friend's disappearance, but he definitely felt that he needed to become stronger so that this would never happen again.

Aang himself began to think. Bumi and Michael were always innovating, trying to use Bending in unconventional ways. If they could mix styles and invent new techniques, why couldn't he do the same?

Without even knowing it, Michael's "Avatar Ultra" plan was gaining momentum without the involvement of the initiator.

But who could blame him? He had other things to do right now.

-=-=-=-=-=-

"Come all you young sailor men, listen to me,

I'll sing you a song of the fish in the sea;"

Michael stood on a raft he made after two days of work and used Waterbending to push his "ship" forward. He cut down enough trees using the water blades and tied them together with the coil of rope that lay at the bottom of his bag.

His black hair was tied in a short braid at the back of his head, and next to his left eye was a thin braid Captain Jack Sparrow style - he even tied a silver coin into it. His skin was bronzed a little from two days of continuous work in the sun, and his hands were calloused again from working with wood and ropes. His staff served as a mast that caught the air and helped the ship sail forward.

In short, Michael chose to become a pirate. He was so immersed in his role that he even remembered the shanties he had heard in his past life.

He raised his hands in front of him and felt the water flow around his raft.

"And it's...

Windy weather, boys, stormy weather, boys,

When the wind blows, we're all together, boys;

Blow ye winds westerly, blow ye winds, blow,

Jolly sou'wester, boys, steady she goes."

With each "b" the raft was pushed forward by a small wave of water from below. Michael sang with a small smile on his face, wondering what his friends would think if they saw him now. If he could use Airbending, he would create a dozen singing voices to not feel so alone, but he had to limit himself to the sound of his own voice.

"Up jumps the eel with his slippery tail,

Climbs up aloft and reefs the topsail."

His raft was made from several tree trunks cut vertically in the middle and tied together with a coil of rope. He could have made something like a canoe, but he didn't find a tree big enough for it. Besides, he preferred to have a place to stretch his legs.

"And it's windy weather, boys, stormy weather, boys,

When the wind blows, we're all together, boys;

Blow ye winds westerly, blow ye winds, blow,

Jolly sou'wester, boys, steady she goes."

After talking to the octopus, Michael began to really try to "see nature," whatever that meant. So he dropped all unnecessary thoughts and tried to become one with the ocean - not in the sense of "my skin became water again," once was enough.

He remembered those few quiet walks through the woods in his past world, when he was alone with the music. Unfortunately, usually such walks ended with four or five extra wallets in his bag.

"Then up jumps the shark with his nine rows of teeth,

Saying, "You eat the dough boys, and I'll eat the beef!""

He threw his arms out to the sides and let his Chi control the water even without moving. After his transformation into a waterman, it became much easier for him to use Waterbending, which was strange but welcome.

"And it's windy weather, boys, stormy weather, boys,

When the wind blows, we're all together, boys;

Blow ye winds westerly, blow ye winds, blow,

Jolly sou'wester, boys, steady she goes."

Sometimes, when his concentration failed and he let go of all his worries, the pieces of his skin on his right arm turned into water and tried to heal his scars, but nothing helped. It could only soften the scars and make them more silvery than just light.

"Up jumps the whale... the largest of all,

"If you want any wind, well, I'll blow ye a squall!""

He finished the song and threw his hands forward, creating a huge wave that lifted the raft a good twenty meters up. Michael laughed out loud seeing what he was now capable of and continued his journey with a smile. With all the ideas for new techniques, he will definitely not be bored.